I have an algo written in java and also in python. I am planning to use IB when finally going live with the algo. However, I am wanting to do some paper trading before that. IB requires a funded account of $10k to use their paper trading features. Are there any other API's out there that I can use to papertrade that are free and do not require a funded account? If you have used anything else besides IB for paper trading, please let me know! Thanks!
assuming you have a market data feed, tradelink can papertrade that feed. iqfeed starts around $70/month for retail i believe. tradelink not java or python though, although there are supposedly decent .net intepreters for python. maybe if you wrote your idea in two languages already you don't mind though. ib has a demo account you can papertrade with, but i believe it's delayed by a day and shared by many people.
quantopian is great but still in beta mode but regardless you can write your code in python and backtest through your browser and run live simulations. (they will start live trading with ib shortly)